Oversight and Transparency

Shabbir Khan, an executive for the Saudi conglomerate Tamimi Global Co, throws a lavish birthday party for KBR procurement manager Stephen Seamans at a Tamimi “party house” near Camp Arifjan, a Kuwaiti base near the border. Khan gives Seamans the use of a prostitute as one of his birthday presents. Driving Seamans back home, Khan offers Seamans $130,000 in kickbacks. Five days after the party, with Seamans and Khan driving the deal, KBR awards Tamimi a $14.4 million mess hall subcontract for the upcoming invasion of Iraq. This and other information about KBR war profiteering in Iraq comes from a federal investigation that will begin in late 2007 (see October 2006 and Beyond). [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

KBR procurement manager Stephen Seamans gives his crony Shabbir Khan (see October 2002), of the Saudi conglomerate Tamimi Global Co, inside information that allows Tamimi to secure a $2 million KBR subcontract to establish a mess hall at a Baghdad palace. Seamans subsequently puts through change orders that inflate the subcontract to $4.7 million. This and other information about KBR war profiteering in Iraq comes from a federal investigation that will begin in late 2007 (see October 2006 and Beyond). [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

Jay Hallen, a 24-year old Yale graduate, is bored with his job at a real-estate firm. He is fascinated with the Middle East, and has taken some Arabic classes and read some history books about the region. He contacts Reuben Jeffrey, an adviser to CPA head L. Paul Bremer whom Hallen had met in 2002 when trying to land a job at the White House, and asks if there is a job for him in Baghdad. 'I Don't Have a Finance Background' - Three weeks later, Hallen is in Baghdad, and meets with Thomas Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing Iraq’s state-owned enterprises. Foley, a former classmate of President Bush and a major Republican donor, says he is putting Hallen in charge of Baghdad’s stock exchange. Hallen is shocked. “Are you sure?” Hallen asks. “I don’t have a finance background.” No problem, Foley responds. He will be the project manager; his subordinates will do the actual work. Before the invasion, Baghdad’s stock exchange was primitive by American standards; author Rajiv Chandrasekaran will describe it as loud, boisterous, and, despite all appearances, quite functional. After the invasion it was looted to the bare walls and ignored by the first wave of US economic reconstruction specialists. But Iraqi brokers and businessmen want it reopened, so the CPA acquiesces. Revamping the Exchange - Hallen launches an ambitious, if almost entirely ignorant, plan to modernize and upgrade the stock exchange to make it the most technologically sophisticated exchange in the Arab world. He also wants to implement a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry. The Iraqi brokers and businessmen who clamored for the exchange to reopen are horrified at Hallen’s plans. “People are broke and bewildered,” broker Talib Tabatabai—a graduate of Florida State’s business department—tells Hallen. “Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were.” Tabatabai, like other brokers, believes Hallen’s plan is ludicrously grandiose. “It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn’t be accomplished,” he will later recall. But Hallen is unmoved. Hallen's View - “Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world,” Hallen will later say. “There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn’t have a stake in.” To just reopen the exchange the way it was, Hallen will insist, “would have been irresponsible and short-sighted.” Hallen recruits a team of American volunteers, most with no more experience or knowledge of finance than he has, to rewrite the securities laws, train the brokers, and purchase the necessary computers. By the spring of 2004, CPA head Bremer approves the new laws and appoints nine Iraqis hand-picked by Hallen to become the exchange’s board of governors. No CPA Role - The new exchange board names Tabatabai as its chairman. The new laws have no place for a CPA adviser as a decision-maker; immediately a conflict between Hallen and the board arises. Hallen wants to wait several more months for the new computer system to arrive and be installed; unwilling to wait, Tabatabai and the board members buy dozens of dry-erase boards for the exchange floor, and two days after Hallen’s tour ends, the exchange is open for business. Without CPA oversight, the exchange quickly begins functioning more or less as it did before the invasion. When asked what would have happened had Hallen not been assigned to reopen the exchange, Tabatabai will answer: “We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize.… Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia.” [Washington Post, 9/17/2006]

James Haveman, a 60-year old social worker and the director of a faith-based international relief organization, is recommended by the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, to run Iraq’s health care system. Haveman earned Engler’s approval by running a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that pushed pregnant women not to have abortions. Engler recommends Haveman to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense; Haveman is soon dispatched to Baghdad to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq’s health-care system. Replacing the Expert with the 'Loyalist' - Wolfowitz orders the immediate firing of Dr. Frederick Burkle, who worked the issue during the invasion. Unlike Haveman, Burkle has extensive experience in such areas: he has multiple degrees in public health, taught disaster-response issues at Johns Hopkins University, and is currently a deputy assistant administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), who sent him to Baghdad in the days after the invasion. Burkle has extensive experience working in postwar climates such as Kosovo, Somalia, and Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague will call him the “single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government.” However, Burkle lacks the Republican political connections. A USAID official tells Burkle that the White House wants a “loyalist” in the job, and Haveman fits the bill. Anti-Smoking Campaigns, Fee-Based Care - Haveman’s tenure is marked by voluble recitations of how well the reconstruction is going: he tells anyone who will listen about how many Iraqi hospitals have reopened and about the pay raises Iraqi doctors have received. He refuses to discuss how decrepit most Iraqi hospitals still are, or the fact that many of Iraq’s best doctors are fleeing the country. Haveman mounts an aggressive anti-smoking campaign (and appoints a closet smoker to head it), ignoring comments that Iraqis have far bigger dangers in their lives than tobacco and recommendations that CPA funds might better be spent trying to combat fatal maladies running rampant through Iraqi populations. Haveman, a conservative ideologue, is offended by the idea that health care in Iraq is free. He institutes a fee-based health care system instead. Most importantly, he allocates almost all of the Health Ministry’s share of US reconstruction funds—some $793 million—to renovating Iraqi maternity hospitals and building community medical clinics. He later explains that his goal is “to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don’t get health care unless you go to a hospital.” Unfortunately, his decision means that no funds are available to reconstruct emergency rooms and operating theaters in Iraqi hospitals, which are being overrun with injuries from insurgent attacks. Privatizing the Drug Supply Distribution Process - Haveman opposes the idea of state-based drug and medical supply distribution on ideological grounds. Instead, he decides to privatize the dysfunctional government firm that imports and distributes drugs and medical supplies to Iraqi hospitals. When he served as Michigan’s director of community health, he dramatically cut the amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for poor citizens by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe to Medicaid patients. He instituted a short list of cheaper drugs that poor patients were limited to using. Haveman decides that the same approach will work in Iraq. Currently, Iraq has around 4,500 drugs on its formulary, and Haveman decides the list is much too long. Any private firm who wants to bid on the job of supplying drugs and medical supplies will not want to deal with such a long list. Haveman also wants to restrict the firm to buying American-made drugs and supplies—no more medicines from Iran, Syria, or Russia. The Pentagon sends Haveman three formulary experts to help him implement his plan, including Lieutenant Commander Theodore Briski, a Navy pharmacist. Haveman’s order, as Briski later recalls, is “Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home.” Two days into his position, Briski decides that Haveman’s plan is untenable. The existing formulary works well enough, he believes. Haveman wants to redesign “the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope—on a grand scale.” Most importantly, Briski recalls, Haveman and his advisers “really didn’t know what they were doing.” Others agree, including many on Haveman’s team. Rewriting the formulary is a major distraction, they argue, as is privatizing the pharmaceutical distribution process. Haveman ignores the immediate needs of the populace for his grandiose, ill-considered plans. No Progress - When Haveman leaves Iraq, the hospitals are as decrepit and dysfunctional as they were when he arrived. Baghdad’s largest medical facility, Yarmouk Hospital, lacks basic equipment to monitor blood pressure and heart rate. Operating rooms lack essential surgical tools and sterilizers. Pharmacy shelves are bare. The Health Ministry estimates that of the 900 drugs it deems essential, hospitals lack 40 percent of them. Of the 32 medicines used in combating chronic diseases, 26 are unavailable. Health Minister Aladin Alwan asks the United Nations for help, asks neighboring nations for emergency donations, and throws out Haveman’s idea for a new formulary. “We didn’t need a new formulary,” he later says. “We needed drugs. But the Americans did not understand that.” [Washington Post, 9/17/2006]

Author Rajiv Chandrasekaran, holding a copy of his 2006 book, ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City.’ [Source: Daylife (.com)]Americans who want to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the so-called “Green Zone,” the fenced-off area of Baghdad also called “Little America” and the hub of US governmental and corporate activities, are routed through Jim O’Beirne, a political functionary in the Pentagon whose wife is prominent conservative columnist Kate O’Beirne. Focus on Ideology, Not Experience or Expertise - O’Beirne is less interested in an applicant’s expertise in Middle Eastern affairs or in post-conflict resolution than he is in an applicant’s loyalty to the Bush administration. Some of the questions asked by his staff to applicants: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? According to author Rajiv Chandrasekaran, two applicants were even grilled about their views on abortion and Roe v. Wade (see January 22, 1973). While such questions about political beliefs are technically illegal, O’Beirne uses an obscure provision in federal law to hire most staffers as “temporary political appointees,” thus allowing him and his staff to skirt employment regulations that prohibit such questioning. The few Democrats who are hired are Foreign Service employees or active-duty soldiers, and thus protected from being questioned about their politics. Unskilled Applicants - The applicants chosen by O’Beirne and his staff often lack the most fundamental skills and experience. The applicant chosen to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange is a 24-year old with no experience in finance, but who had submitted an impressively loyalist White House job application (see April 2003 and After). The person brought in to revamp Iraq’s health care system is chosen for his work with a faith-based relief agency (see April 2003 and After). The man chosen to retool Iraq’s police forces is a “hero of 9/11” who completely ignores his main task in favor of taking part in midnight raids on supposed criminal hangouts in and around Baghdad (see May 2003 - July 2003). And the manager of Iraq’s $13 billion budget is the daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator who has no accounting experience, but graduated from a favored evangelical university for home-schooled children. Selection Process - O’Beirne seeks resumes from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks, and Republican activists. He thoroughly weeds out resumes from anyone he deems ideologically suspect, even if those applicants speak Arabic or Farsi, or possess useful postwar rebuilding experience. Frederick Smith, currently the deputy director of the CPA, will later recall O’Beirne pointing to one young man’s resume and pronouncing him “an ideal candidate.” The applicant’s only real qualification is his job working for the Republican Party in Florida during the 2000 presidential recount. Comment by Employee - A CPA employee writes a friend about the recruitment process: “I watched resumes of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to ‘the president’s vision for Iraq’ (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was ‘uncertain.’ I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy… and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors.” Result: Little Reconstruction, Billions Wasted or Disappeared - In 2006, Chandrasekaran will write: “The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2-year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration’s gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.” Smith will later say: “We didn’t tap—and it should have started from the White House on down—just didn’t tap the right people to do this job. It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings.” The conservative ideologues in the CPA will squander much of the $18 billion in US taxpayer dollars allocated for reconstruction, some on pet projects that suit their conservative agenda but do nothing for Iraqi society, and some never to be traced at all. “Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq—training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation—could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA,” Chandrasekaran will write. Projects - Instead of helping rebuild Iraq—and perhaps heading off the incipient insurgency—CPA ideologues will spend billions on, among other things, rewriting Iraqi tax law to incorporate the so-called “flat tax,” selling off billions of dollars’ worth of government assets, terminating food ration distribution, and other programs. Life in Green Zone - Most spend almost all of their time “cloistered” in the Green Zone, never interacting with real Iraqi society, where they create what Chandrasekaran later calls “a campaign war room” environment. “Bush-Cheney 2004” stickers, T-shirts, and office desk furnishings are prominently displayed. “I’m not here for the Iraqis,” one staffer tells a reporter. “I’m here for George Bush.” Gordon Robison, then an employee in the Strategic Communications office, will later recall opening a package from his mother containing a book by liberal economist Paul Krugman. The reaction among his colleagues is striking. “It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick,” he will recall. [Washington Post, 9/17/2006]

The Justice Department decides that Iraq needs around 6,600 foreign advisers to rehabilitate and rebuild its police forces. The White House sends one person: former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik. [Washington Post, 9/17/2006] In film shot for a 2007 documentary, No End in Sight, Kerik will recall: “First week May I was contacted by the White House… would I meet with Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld… to discuss policing policies in Iraq.… [W]e discussed basically the Ministry of the Interior and reconstitution of the Interior, what the Interior consisted of, what the prior offices were, estimated number of police, and border controls. Some information they had, some they didn’t.” Reporter Michael Moss will continue in the footage (which is cut from the final version of the documentary): “They saw in Bernie a quick fix.… [H]e had 10 days to prepare… hadn’t been to Iraq; knew little about it; and in part, prepared for the job by watching A&E documentaries on Saddam Hussein.” [New York Post, 12/14/2007]9/11 Star - Kerik is considered a star. Made famous by his efforts in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attacks (see (After 10:28 a.m.-12:00 pm.) September 11, 2001), he is asked for his autograph by soldiers and constantly pressed for interviews by reporters. President Bush considers Kerik the perfect man to take over Iraq’s Interior Ministry and rebuild the shattered Iraqi police forces. His previous experience in the Middle East is dubious—as security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, he had been expelled as part of an investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. Others Too Liberal - He also lacks any experience in postwar policing, but White House officials view this as an asset. The veterans the White House is familiar with lack the committment to establishing a democracy in Iraq, they feel. Those with experience—post-conflict experts with the State Department, the United Nations, or non-governmental organizations—are viewed as too liberal. Kerik is a solidly conservative Republican with an unwavering loyalty to the Bush administration and a loud advocate of democracy in Iraq. Author Rajiv Chandrasekaran will later write: “With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.” [Washington Post, 9/17/2006]White House 'Eyes and Ears' - Kerik will quickly make clear one of his top priorities as Iraq’s new police chief: according to one subordinate, he will frequently remind his underlings that he is the Bush administration’s “eyes and ears” in Iraq. [TPM Muckraker, 11/9/2007]

Bernard Kerik in the Green Zone, July 2003. [Source: Associated Press / Dario Lopez-Mills]Former New York City police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, the newly appointed head of Iraq’s Interior Ministry and the man chosen to rebuild Iraq’s police forces (see Early May, 2003), does not make a strong impression on the State Department’s Robert Gifford, a senior adviser to the Interior Ministry and an expert on international law enforcement. Kerik is in Iraq to take over Gifford’s job. He tells Gifford that his main function is to “bring more media attention to the good work on police,” and he doubts “the situation is… as bad as people think it is.” When Gifford briefs Kerik, he quickly realizes that Kerik isn’t listening. “He didn’t listen to anything,” Gifford will later recall. “He hadn’t read anything except his e-mails. I don’t think he read a single one of our proposals.” Kerik is not in Baghdad to do the heavy lifting of leading the rebuilding. He intends to leave that to Gifford. Kerik will brief American officials and reporters. And, he says, he will go out on some law enforcement missions himself. Kerik garners much network air time by telling reporters that he has assessed the situation in Iraq and it is improving. Security in Baghdad, he says, “is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes.” He tells a Time reporter that “people are starting to feel more confident. They’re coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened.” Kerik parades around the Green Zone with a team of South African mercenaries as his personal bodyguard force, and packs a 9mm handgun under his safari vest. Ignoring Basic Processes - The first few months after the overthrow of the Hussein government are a critical time. Police officers need to be called back to work and screened for Ba’ath Party connections. They must be retrained in due process, in legal (non-torture) interrogation procedures, and other basic law enforcement procedures. New police chiefs need to be selected. Tens of thousands of new police officers must be hired and trained. But Kerik has no interest in any of this. He only holds two staff meetings, and one of these is a show for a New York Times reporter. Kerik secures no funding for police advisers. He leaves the chores of organizing and training Iraqi police officers to US military policemen, most of whom have no training in civilian law enforcement. Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission, will later say: “He was the wrong guy at the wrong time. Bernie didn’t have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person.… Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality.” Night Adventures - What Kerik does do is organize a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to chase down and kill off members of the black market criminal syndicates that have sprung up after the invasion. He often joins the group on nighttime raids, leaving the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, appearing at CPA administrator L. Paul Bremer’s morning staff meetings to regale his audience with tales of the night’s adventures. Kerik’s hit squad does put a few car-theft and kidnapping gangs out of business, and Kerik makes sure to get plenty of press coverage for these successes. But he leaves the daily work of rebuilding the Iraqi police to others: he sleeps during the day so he can go out at night. Many members of the Interior Ministry become increasingly distressed at Kerik’s antics and his systematic ignorance of his duties, but realize that they can do nothing. “Bremer’s staff thought he was the silver bullet,” a member of the Justice Department assessment mission will later say. “Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11.” When Kerik leaves three months later, virtually nothing has been done to rebuild Iraq’s police forces. (Kerik will blame others for the failures, saying he was given insufficient funds to hire police advisers or to establish large-scale training programs.) He will later recall his service in Baghdad: “I was in my own world. I did my own thing.” [Washington Post, 9/17/2006]'Irresponsible' - In 2007, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) will say that Kerik was “irresponsible” in his tenure as head of Iraq’s Interior Ministry (see November 9, 2007). “Kerik was supposed to be there to help train the police force,” McCain will say. “He stayed two months and one day left, just up and left.” [Associated Press, 11/9/2007]

Jay Garner, a retired general selected by the Pentagon a month before to direct reconstruction efforts in Iraq, is replaced by diplomat Paul Bremer III as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Bremer is thought more capable of dealing with the increasing rebellion and lawlessness in Iraq. [CNN, 5/11/2003]

The UN Security Council unanimously passes Resolution 1483, which lifts sanctions on Iraq, legitimizes the occupation by coalition forces, and gives the occupying powers control over Iraq’s natural resources. The resolution also states that coalition authorities must “comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907.” The Hague Regulations require that occupying powers respect the laws of the country it occupies. Additionally, the resolution creates the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which is to be funded with Iraqi oil revenues, frozen Iraqi assets being held outside the US, and $8.1 billion in funds transferred from the UN-administered Oil-for-Food program. The resolution mandates that Iraq’s DFI funds be “in a transparent manner to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people… and for other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq.” It requires that management of the funds “be audited by
independent public accountants approved by the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq.” [UN Security Council, 5/22/2003, pp. 4 ; Guardian, 5/23/2003]

KBR procurement managers Stephen Seamans and Jeff Mazon, who have between them already executed logistics subcontracts for the US military in Iraq worth $321 million, put together yet another deal for their business crony Shabbir Khan, of the Saudi conglomerate Tamimi Global Co (see October 2005, October 2002, and April 2003). However, this deal puts US soldiers at risk. According to KBR’s enormous LOGCAP contract with the Army, KBR is required to medically screen the thousands of kitchen workers subcontractors such as Tamimi import from poor villages in countries like Nepal, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Instead of performing the required medical screenings, Khan gives falsified files on 550 Tamimi kitchen workers to the US Defense Department. KBR retests those 550 workers at a Kuwait City clinic and finds that 172 test positive for exposure to the hepatitis A virus. Khan tries to suppress the test results, telling the clinic that Tamimi would do no more business with his clinic if it informs KBR about the results. Further retests show that none of the 172 have contagious hepatitis A, and Khan’s attorneys will claim during a subsequent investigation (see October 2006 and Beyond) that no soldiers caught any diseases from any of Tamimi’s workers. Other firms besides Tamimi show similar problems, causing KBR to begin vaccinating the employees for a variety of diseases at the job sites. [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer describes US as occupying power in an interview with the Washington Post. “As long as we’re here, we are the occupying power. It’s a very ugly word, but it’s true.” [Washington Post, 6/18/2003]

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer is under pressure to explain how he intends to transfer power in Iraq from the CPA and the hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC—see July 13, 2003), especially in light of Bremer’s recent, unilateral cancellation of national elections (see June 28, 2003). Bremer chooses an unusual venue to respond: the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. In a column entitled “Iraq’s Path to Sovereignty,” Bremer writes that national elections are “simply… not possible” at this time. Instead, the IGC will develop a plan for drafting and ratifying a new constitution. [Washington Post, 9/8/2003; Roberts, 2008, pp. 129-130] This will be followed by elections and, finally, complete transfer of the CPA’s powers to the new Iraqi government. Bremer gives no hint of a timetable, and implies that the process will not end quickly. Influential Iraqis, and US allies such as France and Germany, are disturbed by the prospect of an essentially indefinite occupation. Senior Bush officials, particularly National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, will later claim to have been blindsided by Bremer’s plan. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a conservative with excellent sources within the White House, will later write that Bremer “hadn’t cleared the [Post] piece with his higher-ups in the Pentagon or the White House” (see December 2003 and After). However, Bremer’s column is consistent with a Bush statement on Iraqi governance the day before, and with the text of a resolution the administration will try to push through the UN Security Council in October. It is unclear what, if any, authorization Bremer has for his decision, but there are manifest disagreements in the top ranks of White House officials as to the wisdom of Bremer’s planning (see November 15, 2003). [Roberts, 2008, pp. 129-130]

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, frustrated with Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer’s lack of cooperation and coordination with her office (see September 8, 2003 and December 2003 and After), forms the Iraq Stabilization Group (ISG) to oversee Bremer and settle disputes between the Defense and State Departments in governing Iraq. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 130] According to unnamed White House officials, the ISG originated with President Bush’s frustration at the lack of progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “The president knows his legacy, and maybe his re-election, depends on getting this right,” says an administration official. “This is as close as anyone will come to acknowledging that it’s not working.” Defense Department officials deny that the ISG is designed to take power away from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “Don recognizes this is not what the Pentagon does best, and he is, in some ways, relieved to give up some of the authority here,” says one senior Pentagon official. In reality, both Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are giving up some control over the reconstruction efforts to the White House, specifically to the National Security Council. Rice will oversee four coordinating committees, on counterterrorism efforts, economic development, political affairs in Iraq and media messaging. One of her deputies will run each committee, assisted by undersecretaries from State, Defense, and the Treasury Department, as well as representatives from the CIA. The counterterrorism committee will be run by Frances Fragos Townsend; the economic committee by Gary Edson; the political affairs committee by Robert Blackwill; and the communications committee by Anna Perez. [New York Times, 10/6/2003] In May 2004, the Washington Post will report that the ISG is dysfunctional and ineffective almost from the outset; within months, all but Blackwill have been reassigned (Perez will leave Washington for a job with NBC), and a search of the White House Web site will find no mention of the ISG later than October 2003. [Washington Post, 5/18/2004]

The White House announces a new plan for Iraqi governance. It is drastically different from the one unilaterally announced by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer two months before (see September 8, 2003). It flip-flops Bremer’s plan, putting a transfer of power to a provisional Iraqi government first, then having elections for an interim government, and finally providing for the drafting and adoption of a new constitution. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 130]

Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer (see May 1, 2003) asserts his independence from US government oversight, a stance assisted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bremer is formally slated to report to Rumsfeld, but says Rumsfeld has no direct authority over him. Instead, Bremer insists, he reports directly to the White House. Rumsfeld, usually jealously protective of his bureaucratic prerogatives, tells National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: “He doesn’t work for me. He works for you” (see Late September, 2003). But Bremer is not willing to report to either Rice or the National Security Council (NSC) either. The White House had already announced that it had no intention of playing a large role in guiding the reconstruction of Iraq, and the NSC’s Executive Steering Group, set up in 2002 to coordinate war efforts, has been dissolved. Finally, Bremer flatly refuses to submit to Rice’s oversight. As a result, Bremer has already made fundamental policy shifts on his own authority that are at odds with what Pentagon planners had intended (see May 16, 2003 and May 23, 2003), with what many feel will be—or already have caused—disastrous consequences. [Roberts, 2008, pp. 128-129]

The Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency sends a draft audit report to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root (KBR) claiming that the firm overcharged the US military as much as $61 million for fuel deliveries into Iraq. The report says that KBR charged an average of $2.64 per gallon, more than twice the price others were paying. The DCAA also says the company has been slow to provide cost estimates for its projects in Iraq. KBR has given the US government estimates for only 12 orders. As of this date, 69 are overdue. [New York Times, 12/12/2003]

The US Army Corps of Engineers (US ACE) issues a waiver relieving Halliburton of the obligation to provide the government with “cost and pricing data” for the fuel it sells to the US military. The company was recently accused of overcharging the military as much as $61 million for fuel deliveries into Iraq (see December 5, 2003). The waiver will make it difficult for auditors to determine whether Halliburton or its Kuwaiti subcontractor overcharged the US government. [US Congress, 1/6/2004 ]

The International Advisory and Monitoring Board for Iraq (IAMB), an independent agency formed to oversee the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) and Iraq’s oil exports, notes in briefings to the CPA that the production of crude oil is going unmetered. It will later say in a report that such practices could result in the diversion of Iraq’s oil resources. It recommends that the CPA properly install metering equipment as soon as possible. [International Advisory and Monitoring Board for Iraq, 12/2004, pp. 2, 4 ]

After weapons inspector David Kay’s resignation (see January 23, 2004), the call to investigate the failure of intelligence surrounding the Iraq invasion reaches a fever pitch. White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later write: “[President] Bush and his advisers feared outside investigators. However, as momentum built for yet another independent probe, we saw the benefit of acting quickly and on our terms. Bush soon announced the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission to look into our intelligence on WMD, including Iraq (see March 8, 2005). Its members were appointed by the president, and its scope set by his team. It would not include looking at how the intelligence had been used to make the case for war. That was something Bush and his top advisers sought to avoid, concerned at a minimum—particularly in an election year—that it would prove politically fatal. They were willing to allow things to become more politicized, some considering it a battle that could be fought to a draw or even used to motivate the base, and believed that the short-term political cost could be minimized. In Bush’s mind, how the case for had been made scarcely mattered. What mattered now was the policy and showing success. The public tends to be more forgiving when the results are promising. If the policy was right and the selling of the policy could be justified at the time, then any difference between the two mattered little. In this view, governing successfully in Washington is about winning public opinion and getting positive results. To this day, the president seems unbothered by the disconnect between the chief rationale for war and the driving motivation behind it, and unconcerned about how the case was packaged.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 202]

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, warns in an op-ed piece that US plans to submit Iraq’s economy to shock therapy—i.e., the rapid implementation of market reforms such as privatization and deregulation—will fail in Iraq. He advises the international community to “direct its money to humanitarian causes, such as hospitals and schools, rather than backing American designs.” He writes: “When the Berlin Wall fell, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union began transitions to a market economy, with heated debates over how this should be accomplished. One choice was shock therapy… while the other was gradual market liberalization to allow for the rule of law to be established at the same time. Today, there is a broad consensus that shock therapy, at least at the level of microeconomic reforms, failed, and that countries (Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia) that took the gradualist approach to privatization and the reconstruction of institutional infrastructure managed their transitions far better than those that tried to leapfrog into a laissez-faire economy…. But the Bush administration, backed by a few handpicked Iraqis, is pushing Iraq towards an even more radical form of shock therapy than was pursued in the former Soviet world. Indeed, shock therapy’s advocates argue that its failures were due not to excessive speed—too much shock and not enough therapy—but to insufficient shock.” But it won’t work, he says, because instability will deter investment and those who do purchase state assets “may then be reluctant to invest in them; instead, as happened elsewhere, their efforts may be directed more at asset stripping than at wealth creation.” He adds that providing Iraq with loans will only exacerbate the country’s difficulties. He concludes: “America’s economic program for reconstructing Iraq is laying the foundations for poverty and chaos.” [ZNet, 3/17/2004]

CBS graphic illustrating interview with General Anthony Zinni. [Source: CBS News]Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni was the chief of the US Central Command until 2000, and, until just before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration’s special envoy to the Middle East. Now he has become an outspoken critic of the administration’s war efforts in Iraq. Zinni gives an interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes, in part to promote his new biography, Battle Ready, co-authored by famed war novelist Tom Clancy. 'Dereliction of Duty' among Senior Pentagon Officials - Zinni says that senior officials at the Pentagon, from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down, are guilty of what he calls dereliction of duty, and he believes it is time for “heads to roll.” Zinni tells correspondent Steve Kroft: “There has been poor strategic thinking in this. There has been poor operational planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to ‘stay the course,’ the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it’s time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it’s been a failure.” In his book, Zinni writes: “In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence, and corruption.… I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground and fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan. I think there was dereliction in lack of planning.” 'The Wrong War at the Wrong Time' - Zinni calls Iraq “the wrong war at the wrong time,” and with the wrong strategy. Before the invasion, Zinni told Congress (see October 31, 2002): “This is, in my view, the worst time to take this on. And I don’t feel it needs to be done now.” The generals never wanted this war, Zinni says, but the civilians in the Pentagon and the White House did. “I can’t speak for all generals, certainly,” he says. “But I know we felt that this situation was contained (see Summer 2002-2003). Saddam was effectively contained.… And I think most of the generals felt, let’s deal with this one at a time. Let’s deal with this threat from terrorism, from al-Qaeda.” Much Larger Force Required - Zinni was heavily involved in planning for any invasion of Iraq, going back to at least 1999 (see April-July 1999). Zinni always envisioned any such invasion as being implemented with enough ground forces to get the job done quickly and cleanly. Rumsfeld had different ideas—the invasion could be carried off with fewer troops and more high-tech weaponry. Zinni wanted around 300,000 troops: “We were much in line with General Shinseki’s view. We were talking about, you know, 300,000, in that neighborhood.” Would a larger force have made a difference? Kroft asks. Zinni replies, “I think it’s critical in the aftermath, if you’re gonna go to resolve a conflict through the use of force, and then to rebuild the country.” Rumsfeld should have anticipated the level and ferocity of violence that erupted in the aftermath of the toppling of the Hussein government, but, Zinni says, he did not, and worse, he ignored or belittled those such as Shinseki and a number of foreign allies who warned him of the possible consequences. Instead, Zinni notes, Rumsfeld relied on, among other sources, fabricated intelligence from Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress (see September 19-20, 2001). 'Seat of the Pants Operation' - The entire reconstruction effort was, in Zinni’s mind, a seat-of-the-pants affair. “As best I could see, I saw a pickup team, very small, insufficient in the Pentagon with no detailed plans that walked onto the battlefield after the major fighting stopped and tried to work it out in the huddle,” he says, “in effect to create a seat-of-the-pants operation on reconstructing a country.” Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer is “a great American who’s serving his country, I think, with all the kind of sacrifice and spirit you could expect. But he has made mistake after mistake after mistake.” Bremer’s mistakes include “Disbanding the army (see May 23, 2003). De-Baathifying (see May 16, 2003), down to a level where we removed people that were competent and didn’t have blood on their hands that you needed in the aftermath of reconstruction—alienating certain elements of that society.” Zinni reserves most of the blame for the Pentagon: “I blame the civilian leadership of the Pentagon directly.” Heads Should Roll, Beginning with Rumsfeld's - Zinni continues: “But regardless of whose responsibility I think it is, somebody has screwed up. And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they’ve screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That’s what bothers me most.” The first one to go, Zinni says, is Rumsfeld: “Well, it starts with at the top. If you’re the secretary of defense and you’re responsible for that.” Neoconservatives at Fault - Next up are Rumsfeld’s advisers, whom Kroft identifies as the cadre of neoconservatives “who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel.” Zinni says: “Certainly those in your ranks that foisted this strategy on us that is flawed. Certainly they ought to be gone and replaced.” Kroft identifies that group as including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Elliott Abrams; and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Zinni calls them political ideologues who have hijacked US policy in Iraq: “I think it’s the worst-kept secret in Washington. That everybody—everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do.” Like so many others who criticized them, Zinni recalls, he was targeted for personal counterattacks. After publishing one article, he says: “I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that’s the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it.” Fundamental Conceptual Flaws - Zinni says the neoconservatives believed they could remake the Middle East through the use of American military might, beginning with Iraq. Instead, the US is viewed in the region as “the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.” Changing Course - Zinni has a number of recommendations. He advises President Bush and his senior officials to reach out much more strongly to the United Nations, and to US allies, and secure the UN’s backing. Do these other countries “want a say in political reconstruction? Do they want a piece of the pie economically? If that’s the cost, fine. What they’re gonna pay for up front is boots on the ground and involvement in sharing the burden.” Many more troops are needed on the ground, and not just American troops, he says, enough to seal off the borders, protect the road networks. Exit Strategy - Zinni says that planning for an exit is necessary because it is inevitable that the US will want to withdraw, and that time will come sooner rather than later. “There is a limit,” he says. “I think it’s important to understand what the limit is. Now do I think we are there yet?” Speaking Out - He is speaking out, he says, because it is his duty to do so: “It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that’s the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result. I can’t think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what’s the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that’s getting just as many troops killed?” [CBS News, 5/21/2004]

The International Advisory and Monitoring Board for Iraq (IAMB) learns during one of its meetings that the CPA has not yet installed metering equipment due to “security and technical” issues despite the fact that money has already been allocated for that purpose. This comes four months after the IAMB informed the CPA of the importance of metering Iraq’s oil production (see February 2004). [International Advisory and Monitoring Board for Iraq, 12/2004, pp. 4 ]

Citing personal reasons, CIA Director George Tenet announces he will be stepping down in the next month. President Bush praises Tenet’s service, but there is widespread agreement that significant intelligence failures occurred during his tenure, most strikingly 9/11 itself. Sources also suggest that Tenet, originally a Clinton appointee, has been made a convenient scapegoat for Bush administration intelligence failures in Iraq and elsewhere. [CNN, 6/4/2004; Independent, 6/4/2004] Tenet and the Bush administration are expecting harsh criticism from several reports expected to find serious failures in intelligence gathering and analysis related to the 9/11 attacks. Most damaging is an upcoming Senate Intelligence Committee report expected to single out the CIA for errors in its judgments before the Iraq war (see June-November 2004). Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) has warned the administration that the report will be so harsh that questions will be raised as to whether senior CIA officials should be held accountable. Tenet will be replaced by Deputy Director John McLaughlin until a replacement is named, and will eventually be replaced by Porter Goss (see September 24, 2004). A friend of Tenet’s, former Deputy Director Richard Kerr, says that Tenet “may have believed that he was hurting the president. He’s an honorable person, and he may have had that as a consideration.” Former Democratic senator David Boren, a close friend and mentor of Tenet’s, says Tenet is not leaving because of criticisms likely to be leveled at either him or the agency: “If criticism either actual or anticipated was a factor, he would have left a long time ago. It’s been months of his desiring to leave.” Bush has asked Tenet to remain in the job several times over the past few months. When Tenet told Bush of his intentions to leave on June 2, Bush asked him to stay through the end of the year. Tenet replied that summer is a natural break point and a good time for him to depart. All the camaraderie and mutual praise between the two men aside, many believe that Tenet is departing in part because he is seen as a possible political liability for Bush. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) says, “I don’t think there are any tears over there” in the White House over Tenet’s departure. Former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) believes that Tenet was in some way pushed to leave. “This president has been enamored of George Tenet, and has been reluctant to hold him or anyone else accountable, and that failure was becoming a bigger and bigger liability,” he says. According to Graham, Bush announces Tenet’s resignation for his own political well-being, “under circumstances where he is at the crime scene as short as possible.” Apparently, senior White House officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell learn of Tenet’s resignation just a few moments before it is announced to the press. Two Congressmen who knew last night of the resignation were Goss (R-FL) and John Warner (R-VA), the chairmen of the House Intelligence and Senate Armed Services Committees, respectively. [New York Times, 6/4/2004]

The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA - see April 17, 2003 and After and January 2003) notes in an internal report that while it lacks an accurate personnel count, it “believe[s] it had a total of 1,196 workers” in Baghdad, about half the authorized number. The Pentagon made up the shortfall by turning to the White House Liaison Office to recruit workers. The Liaison Office normally vets political appointees, and is staffed by right-wing ideologues with little practical experience outside Washington. As a result, the Liaison Office has sent hundreds of recruits to Baghdad who, in the phrasing of the CPA Inspector General, have “inconsistent skill sets.” Author and public policy professor Alasdair Roberts later notes that what the recruits lack in experience, ability, and qualifications, they make up in dogmatic adherence to right-wing ideology. One telling example is the group of CPA workers who manage the multi-billion dollar budget for the Iraqi government. Few, if any, have ever been to the Middle East, nor do any of them speak any of the region’s languages. None have any experience handling budgets of any real size. They are a group of recent college graduates, all in their twenties, who had submitted resumes for unrelated, lower-level jobs through the conservative Heritage Foundation. Roberts later writes, “The inexperience and partisanship of many CPA workers encouraged them to seize the moment and pursue reforms that were unneeded or impractical,” implementing what Roberts calls a “radical reconstruction of Iraqi society” based on neoconservative and fundamentalist dogma, with no understanding of, or concern for, Iraqi society. Many of the proposed reforms are later shelved as unworkable and dangerously provocative; one plan, to privatize Iraq’s state-run enterprises, is set aside for fear that it would lead to “popular unrest.” Most of the staff spend little time in Iraq before returning home; one CPA adviser calls them “90-day wonders getting their tickets punched that said, ‘I’ve been in Baghdad.’” [Roberts, 2008, pp. 127-128]

The auditors sent to Iraq by the Department of Defense’s Inspector General are withdrawn. The auditors were in charge of investigating waste and fraud by the US military and its contractors in Iraq. The criminal investigative arm of the Inspector General also officially ends its assignment in Iraq in October of 2004. The official explanation given is that there are other agencies that conduct oversight of the Pentagon’s spending. Experts respond by saying that only the Inspector General has the capability and mandate to properly oversee the military’s handling of tax dollars. The withdrawal leaves a gap in oversight of over $140 billion in spending by the military. [Knight Ridder, 10/17/2005]

President Bush awards Tenet the Medal of Freedom. [Source: Associated Press]President Bush gives the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq war leader General Tommy Franks, and former Iraq functionary Paul Bremer. The Medal of Freedom is the highest honor the president can bestow. Bush comments, “This honor goes to three men who have played pivotal roles in great events and whose efforts have made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.” [Associated Press, 12/14/2001; Washington Post, 12/14/2004] However, the awards will come in for some criticism, as Tenet, CIA director on 9/11, wrongly believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
(see December 21, 2002), Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army (see May 23, 2003), and Franks, responsible for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to assign enough troops to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, thereby enabling him to escape (see Late October-Early December 2001). [Washington Post, 12/14/2001] John McLaughlin, Tenet’s deputy director, will later say that Tenet “wishes he could give that damn medal back.” [New York Times, 10/2/2006] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later write that this “well-intentioned gesture designed to create positive impressions of the war seemed to backfire.” Instead of holding these three accountable for their role in the deepening Iraq crisis, Bush hails them as heroes. McClellan will observe: “Wasn’t this supposed to be an administration that prided itself on results and believed in responsibility and accountability? If so, why the rush to hand out medals to people who had helped organize what was now looking like a badly botched, ill-conceived war?” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 250-251] David Wade, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry (D-MA), says, “My hunch is that George Bush wasn’t using the same standard when honoring Tenet and Bremer that was applied to previous honorees.” Previous recipients include human rights advocate Mother Teresa, civil rights icon Rosa Parks, and Pope John Paul II. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) says he “would have reached a different conclusion” on Tenet. “I don’t think [he] served the president or the nation well.” [Associated Press, 12/14/2001] Reporter Steve Coll will later comment: “I presume that for President Bush, it was a signal that he wasn’t making Tenet a scapegoat. It would be the natural thing to do, right? You’ve seen this episode of ‘I, Claudius.’ You know, you put the knife in one side and the medal on the other side, and that’s politics.” And author James Bamford will say: “Tenet [retired], and kept his mouth shut about all the things that went on, about what kind of influence [Vice President Dick] Cheney might have had. They still have a CIA, but all the power is now with his team over at the Pentagon. They’re gathering more power every day in terms of intelligence. So largely, Cheney won.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] Author and media critic Frank Rich will later write: “The three medals were given to the men who had lost Osama bin Laden (General Tommy Franks), botched the Iraq occupation (Paul Bremer), and called prewar intelligence on Saddam’s WMDs a ‘slam dunk’ (George Tenet). That the bestowing of an exalted reward for high achievement on such incompetents incited little laughter was a measure of how much the administration, buoyed by reelection, still maintained control of its embattled but not yet dismantled triumphalist wartime narrative.” [Rich, 2006, pp. 158]

Stuart W. Bowen. [Source: PBS]A report completed by Stuart W. Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, finds that $8.8 billion of the $20 billion in Iraqi funds that the Coalition Provisional Authority spent between April 16, 2003 and June 28, 2004 is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management. “Severe inefficiencies and poor management” by the Coalition Provisional Authority has “left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used,” the report says. The reports says that in once case, it’s possible that thousands of “ghost employees” were on an unnamed ministry’s payroll. “CPA staff identified at one ministry that although 8,206 guards were on the payroll, only 602 guards could be validated,” the audit report states. “Consequently, there was no assurance funds were not provided for ghost employees.” [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, 1/30/2005, pp. 16 ; CNN, 1/31/2005] Two years after the release of this report, the inspector general will tell Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca) that the $8.8 billion figure was in fact too low because his investigation was limited to funds disbursed to Iraqi ministries between October 2003 and June 24, 2004. Bowen will tell Waxman that he believes that the lack of accountability and transparency actually extended to the entire $20 billion spent by the CPA. [US Congress, 2/6/2007, pp. 16 ]

Three war contractors for KBR, the firm supplying logistical support for US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, meet in a quiet lounge in London’s Cumberland Hotel. The three men are unaware that federal agents are tailing them. They spend the afternoon drinking and discussing the various bribes they have accepted as kickbacks as a routine part of doing business. KBR procurement manager Stephen Seamans, who, unbeknownst to his colleagues, is wearing a wire for the FBI, wonders whether or not he should return $65,000 in bribes his two fellows, executives from the Saudi conglomerate Tamimi Global Co, gave him. One of the two executives, Tamimi operations director Shabbir Khan, tells him to conceal the money by falsifying business records. “Just do the paperwork,” Khan advises. This and other information about KBR war profiteering in Iraq comes from a federal investigation that will begin in late 2007 (see October 2006 and Beyond). [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

KBR subcontractor Stephen Seamans and his business crony, Shabbir Khan of the Saudi Arabian conglomerate Tamimi Global Co, are arrested as part of the ongoing investigation into war profiteering by KBR and its subcontractors (see October 2006 and Beyond). Khan is convicted of lying to federal agents about the kickbacks he provided Seamans (see February 20, 2008, October 2005, October 2002, April 2003, and June 2003), and will serve 51 months in prison. Seamans pleads guilty to charges stemming from the same business deals, and serves a year and a day in prison. Seamans, an Air Force veteran, once taught ethics to junior KBR employees. In December, during his sentencing hearing, he says he is sorry for taking the bribes, “It is not the way that Americans do business.” [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

The newly released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq says that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the 9/11 attacks. The NIE is compiled from information provided by the 16 American intelligence agencies, and written by the US government’s National Intelligence Council. The NIE is released internally in April 2006, but portions are made public on September 24, 2006. It is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began. [New York Times, 9/24/2006] Robert Hutchings, the council’s former chairman, says, "The war in Iraq has exasperated the global war on terror." [Toronto Daily News, 9/24/2006] The White House has issued its own reports touting its successes against Islamist terrorism and predicting that such activities will dwindle in the coming months. [New York Times, 9/24/2006] The NIE report says, "[T]he Iraq war has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists…and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives. …[T]he Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of al-Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea. Our study shows that the Iraq war has generated a stunning increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and civilian lives lost. Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one third." Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the British secret service (MI5), agrees. She will say in early 2007, "Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation." [Independent, 3/1/2007] Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) says the report should "put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush’s phony argument about the Iraq war." [ABC News, 9/25/2006]

Retired Marine Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, until October 2002 the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is another in a small but vocal group of current and retired generals voicing public dissent against the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Newbold writes an op-ed for Time magazine, and leads off by saying that after Vietnam, he and other career military officers determined never again to “stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it.” But, Newbold writes, it happened again. He takes responsibility for his own actions in planning for the invasion of Iraq, but notes that “[i]nside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots’ rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat—al-Qaeda.” Newbold retired from the military in late 2002, “in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11’s tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I’ve been silent long enough.” The cost of the Bush administration’s “flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood,” he writes, and that blood debt drives him to speak out. A Justifiable War - Invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do, Newbold says, to take on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And though invading Iraq was unnecessary and wrong, he says, the US cannot now just withdraw precipitously: “It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists’ message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts. If, however, the Iraqis prove unable to govern, and there is open civil war, then I am prepared to change my position.” Outrage - Newbold writes of his deep anger at the words of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently said that “we” made the “right strategic decisions,” but made thousands of “tactical errors” (see March 31-April 1, 2006). Newbold calls that statement “an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.” Instead, he writes: “What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures.… My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.” Many of the Pentagon’s highest-ranking generals bear their own blame, Newbold writes, in “act[ing] timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military’s effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction.” Some few actually believed the rationale for war, others were intimidated, and many believed that their sense of duty and obedience precluded their speaking out. “The consequence of the military’s quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.” Many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, “defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight.” Many media reporters, editors, and pundits ignored the warnings and instead played up the rationale for war. New Visions, New Strategies - The first thing to do, says Newbold, is to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld along with “many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach.” The US owes their troops, living and dead, a debt of gratitude and the responsibility to “construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it.” More generals and others in positions of leadership need to speak out, Newbold concludes, and make sure that we as a nation are not “fooled again.” [Time, 4/9/2006]

Federal prosecutors attempt to determine just how much corruption, fraud, and theft has occurred among government contracts handed out to corporations for their work in Iraq. The preliminary answer: a great deal. The US Justice Department chooses to center its probe into war profiteering in the small town of Rock Island, Illinois, because high-ranking Army officials at the arsenal there administer KBR’s LOGCAP III contract to feed, shelter, and support US soldiers, and to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure. KBR, formerly Kellogg, Brown, & Root, is a subsidiary of oil-construction giant Halliburton. The reported violations are rampant (see February 20, 2008, October 2005, October 2002, April 2003, June 2003, and September 21, 2007). [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008] The investigation is under the aegis of the National Procurement Fraud Task Force, formed by the Justice Department to detect, identify, prevent, and prosecute procurement fraud by firms such as KBR. The Task Force includes the FBI, the US Inspectors General community, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, and others. [PR Newswire, 7/13/2007]Multiple Prosecutions Underway - The Justice Department prosecutes four former supervisors for KBR, the large defense firm responsible for most of the military logistics and troop supply operations in Iraq. The government also prosecutes five executives from KBR subcontractors; an Army officer, Pete Peleti, has been found guilty of taking bribes (see February 20, 2008). Two KBR employees have already pleaded guilty in another trial, and about twenty more people face charges in the ever-widening corruption scandal. According to recently unsealed court documents, kickbacks, corruption, and fraud were rampant in contractual dealings months before the first US combat soldier arrived in Iraq. Not only did KBR contractors receive handsome, and illicit, payoffs, but the corruption and fraud endangered the health and safety of US troops stationed in Iraq and Kuwait. One freight-shipping subcontractor has already confessed to bribing five KBR employees to receive preferential treatment; five more were named by Peleti as accepting bribes. Prosecutors have identified three senior KBR executives as having approved deliberately inflated bids. None of these people have yet been charged. Other related charges have been made, from KBR’s refusal to protect employees sexually assaulted by co-workers to findings that the corporation charged $45 for a can of soda. Pentagon Slashed Oversight - The overarching reason why such rampant fraud was, and is, taking place, prosecutors and observers believe, is that the Department of Defense outsourced critical troop support jobs while simultaneously slashing the amount of government oversight (see 2003 and Beyond). Lack of Cooperation - Kuwait refuses to extradite two Middle Eastern businessmen accused of LOGCAP fraud. And KBR refuses to provide some internal documents detailing some of its managers’ business dealings. KBR says it “has not undertaken an exhaustive search of its millions of pages of procurement documents” to determine whether other problems exist. [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

The Iraq Study Group (ISG), chaired by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, holds an early-morning breakfast session with senior officials of the Bush administration, including President Bush, to discuss its 79 recommendations for the future conduct of the Iraq war. The White House essentially ignores the report (see December 2006). ISG member Lawrence Eagleburger will later say of Bush, “I don’t recall, seriously, that he asked any questions” during the meeting. Former Senator's Recollection - Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, another ISG member present at the breakfast meeting, later recalls: “It was an early-morning session, seven a.m., I think, breakfast, the day we trotted it out. And Jim and Lee said, ‘Mr. President, we will’—and Dick was there, [Vice President] Cheney was there—‘just go around the room, if you would, and all of us share with you a quick thought?’ And the president said fine. I thought at first the president seemed a little—I don’t know, just maybe impatient, like, ‘What now?’ He went around the room. Everybody stated their case. It just took a couple minutes. I know what I said. I said, ‘Mr. President, we’re not here to present this to vex or embarrass you in any way. That’s not the purpose of this. We’re in a tough, tough situation, and we think these recommendations can help the country out. We’ve agreed on every word here, and I hope you’ll give it your full attention.’ He said, ‘Oh, I will.’ And I turned to Dick, and I said, ‘Dick, old friend, I hope you’ll gnaw on this, too. This is very important that you hear this and review it.’ And he said, ‘I will, I will, and thanks.’ Then the president gave an address not too far after that. And we were called by [National Security Adviser Stephen] Hadley on a conference call. He said, ‘Thank you for the work. The president’s going to mention your report, and it’ll be—there will be parts of it that he will embrace, in fact, and if he doesn’t happen to speak on certain issues, you know that they’ll be in full consideration in the weeks to come,’ or something like that. And we all listened with a wry smile. We figured that maybe five of the 79 recommendations would ever be considered, and I think we were pretty right.” Hamilton's Recollection - Hamilton has similar recollections of the meeting and the administration’s response to the report: “Cheney was there, never said a word, not a—of course, the recommendations from his point of view were awful, but he never criticized. Bush was very gracious, said we’ve worked hard and did this great service for the country—and he ignored it so far as I can see. He fundamentally didn’t agree with it. President Bush has always sought, still seeks today, a victory, military victory. And we did not recommend that. The gist of what we had to say was a responsible exit. He didn’t like that.” [Vanity Fair, 2/2009]

General George Casey, the outgoing commander of US forces in Iraq, faces criticism from both Republican and Democratic Senators during his testimony before the Armed Services Committee. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tells Casey that “things have gotten markedly and progressively worse” during Casey’s 2 1/2-year tenure, “and the situation in Iraq can now best be described as dire and deteriorating. I regret that our window of opportunity to reverse momentum may be closing.” Casey is slated to become the Army Chief of Staff. McCain, a strong supporter of the “surge” of US forces into Iraq, has proposed a Senate resolution including stringent benchmarks to gauge the progress of the Iraqi government and military. McCain’s resolution and other nonbinding, bipartisan proposals that would express varying degrees of disapproval of Bush’s plan will soon be debated on the Senate floor. [Washington Post, 2/2/2007]

Senate Democrats are wary of the newly released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), recalling the highly inaccurate intelligence reports in the October 2002 NIE that concluded Iraq was rife with WMDs and Saddam Hussein was allied with al-Qaeda. That NIE became one of the foundations of the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq, and one of the prime reasons many Congress members voted to authorize the use of military force in that country. During Senate confirmation hearings for Admiral John McConnell, the nominee to replace John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) says, “One of the sort of deeply held rumors around here is that the intelligence community gives an administration or a president what he wants by way of intelligence.” Sen. Christopher Bond (D-MO), adds, “[W]e are not going to accept national security issue judgment[s] without examining the intelligence underlying the judgments, and I believe this committee has an obligation to perform due diligence on such important documents.” He adds that previous attempts to obtain intelligence material to back up a 2005 NIE on Iran had “run into resistance.” [Washington Post, 2/2/2007]

The Bush escalation plan will involve up to 50,000 troops being sent to Iraq, not the 21,500 as touted by Bush and his officials. The 21,500 are actual combat troops, but logistical and support troops will also need to accompany the combat troops into Iraq. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says, “Over the past few years, [the Defense Department’s] practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops. [This] puts the cost of the president’s decision in even starker terms. If the president proceeds with his plan, thousands more US troops will be at risk, billions more dollars will be required, and there will be a much more severe impact on our military’s readiness.” House Budget Committee chairman John Spratt (D-SC) adds,“These additional troop deployments will cost between $7 billion and $10 billion this year alone—$4 billion to $7 billion more than the administration’s estimate.” Spratt says such an increase in troop levels will be difficult for the US military to maintain; the abnormally high deployment levels for the past four years have “taken a toll” on the military. House Armed Services committee chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) says the report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “appears to conflict with the estimate given by the chief of staff of the Army in his testimony. We will want to carefully investigate just how big the president’s troop increase really is. Is it 21,500 troops, or is it really closer to 33,000 or 43,000?” Martin Meehan (D-MA), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations that has launched a review of Iraq-related costs, says he also is concerned: “I am disturbed that the administration’s figures may not be fully accounting for what a true force increase will entail; if combat troops are deployed, their support needs must not be shortchanged.” [Army Times, 2/2/2007]

After reviewing $57 billion worth of Iraq reconstruction and troop support contracts through September 2006, auditors from the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) inform the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that contractors in Iraq submitted about $5.1 billion in unsupported costs (“unreasonably high”) and $4.9 billion in questionable costs (for which contractors lack proper documentation). About $2.7 billion of these unsupported or questionable billings are from Halliburton alone. [US Congress, 2/15/2007 ]

Vice President Dick Cheney says that Congressional Democrats’ efforts to bring the Iraqi war to a close do nothing except undermine the troops and "embolden" Islamic terrorists. He tells American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), "When members speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines and other arbitrary measures, they are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out. When members of Congress pursue an anti-war strategy that’s been called ‘slow bleed,’ they are not supporting the troops, they are undermining them." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responds that Cheney’s remarks prove "the administration’s answer to continuing violence in Iraq is more troops and more treasure from the American people." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) adds that America is less safe today because of the war. Bush "must change course, and it’s time for the Senate to demand he do it," he says. Both Pelosi and Reid are crafting legislation that will continue to fund the troops in Iraq, but will set a deadline for those troops to begin withdrawing. Meanwhile, Cheney says he wants Congress to begin discussing how to win in Iraq. As he has done many times before, he predicts "disaster" and "chaos" in the Middle East, with either al-Qaeda or Iran emerging dominant from a bloody sectarian battle and compromising regional security, if US troops withdrew from Iraq. Former Democratic senator and Vietnam veteran Max Cleland responds tartly to Dick Cheney’s veiled accusations that Democrats who want a timetable for ending the Iraq occupation are traitors. Cleland rhetorically asks Cheney, "Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War? If you had gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you would have learned something about war. You can’t keep troops on the ground forever. You gotta have a mission. You gotta have a purpose. You can’t keep sending ‘em back and back and back with no mission and no purpose. As a matter of fact, the real enemy is al-Qaeda, it’s al-Qaeda, stupid, it’s not in Iraq." [Associated Press, 3/12/2007]

A Senate panel finds that billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted in reconstruction efforts throughout Iraq through fraud, corruption, incompetence, and outright theft. The panel, led by independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman and moderate Republican Susan Collins, say they are considering legislation to create a commission to help fix problems after investigators found confusion and disarray in the four-year-old Iraq reconstruction effort. Lieberman observes, "Where we’ve seen failure is when the US government failed to plan projects carefully and then failed to keep a close watch over contractors and now we’ve seen billions of dollars wasted—a cost measured not just in dollars but in the undermining of the overall US mission in these war-torn countries." Inspector General Stuart Bowen’s latest report on the occupation’s reconstruction efforts found that nearly $400 billion had either been wasted or simply disappeared, though Bowen’s report was careful not to make allegations of outright criminality. Bowen’s report primarily blames confusion, disarray, and incompetence in joint efforts between the rival Defense and State Departments. "Anyone who has spent appreciative time in the Iraq reconstructive effort understands the tension that exists between the two," Bowen says. Bowen’s latest report finds, among other things, that a Defense Department agency charged with running the reconstruction effort never developed a fully coordinated plan upon members’ arrival in 2003, leading to confusion and duplication of effort. "We were bumping into one another as we tried to solve the same problem,” a former agency official is quoted as saying. Money flowed to reconstruction projects before procedures, training and staffing were fully in place, resulting in a "lack of clearly defined authorities" and little accountability in terms of how dollars were being spent. There was little oversight to ensure that Iraqi companies hired to do reconstruction work operated according to international standards. Earlier this year, federal investigators determined that the Bush administration had squandered as much as $10 billion in reconstruction aid in part because of poor planning and contract oversight, resulting in contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses. [Associated Press, 3/22/2007]

Senator John McCain. [Source: Guardian]After Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a presidential candidate, told reporters that the Senate debate over a phased withdrawal plan for Iraq is aiding the enemies of the US—saying, “I mean, a second-year cadet at West Point will tell you you don’t win wars by telling the enemy when you’re leaving”—Defense Secretary Robert Gates contradicts his assertions. Gates tells the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that the debate has been “helpful in bringing pressure to bear on the Maliki government.” Gates adds that the congressional debate lets Iraqis know that “there is a very real limit to American patience in this entire enterprise.” [Think Progress, 3/30/2007]

Two British men are found guilty of leaking a secret memo about talks between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. David Keogh, a communications officer at the Cabinet Office, is found guilty of two offenses under Britain’s Official Secrets Act, and Leo O’Connor, a researcher for then-member of parliament Anthony Clarke, is found guilty of one offense under the same law. [BBC, 5/9/2007] The memo recorded talks held in the Oval Office between Bush and Blair on April 16, 2004 about the Iraq occupation. Prosecutors claimed during the trial that publication of the document could cost British lives because it contained details about troop movements within Iraq. Few details of the “highly sensitive” memo have been disclosed. However it is known that during his talk with Blair, Bush suggested that allied forces bomb the offices of Arab television network Al Jazeera, a suggestion that many experts and observers have found, in the words of reporter Sarah Lyall, “shocking.” At the time, the White House dismissed reports suggesting this as “outlandish” and a Blair spokesman said, “I’m not aware of any suggestion of bombing any Al Jazeera television station.” [New York Times, 7/12/2006] The jury for the trial is instructed to remain quiet about what they have learned in the courtroom. Keogh originally passed a copy of the classified memo to O’Connor, who passed it along to his boss, Clarke, who is strongly against the war. After receiving the memo, Clarke called the police. O’Connor calls some of the statements in the four-page memo “embarrassing [and] outlandish,” and says he never intended to send copies of the memo to newspapers or other members of parliament. Keogh’s lawyer, Rex Tedd, tells the court that his client “acted out of conscience” and not for any political motivation. “No doubt, he did so misguidedly and he did so in a way which was likely to cause damage.” [BBC, 5/9/2007]

Former KBR subcontract administrator Anthony J. Martin pleads guilty to violating the Anti-Kickback Act. Martin admits to taking bribes from a Kuwaiti company in 2003 in return for granting a $4.67 million contract to the firm. Although the Justice Department does not identify the Kuwaiti firm, other court documents subsequently name the firm as First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting (see September 21, 2007). Martin worked from February 2003 through February 2004 in Kuwait, where he solicited bids from prospective subcontractors under KBR’s largest contract with the US Army, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP III). Martin’s conviction is part of a much larger investigation mounted by the Justice Department in Rock Island, Illinois, investigating corporate fraud in the provision of logistics to the US military deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan (see October 2006 and Beyond). Martin has admitted to accepting $10,000 from the managing partner of First Kuwaiti, Lebanese businessman Wadih Al Absi. He was to receive almost $200,000 more, but testified in his plea bargain agreement that he felt guilty about taking the $10,000 and subsequently refused to take any more. Martin faces up to ten years in prison and possible restitution. [PR Newswire, 7/13/2007; Associated Press, 9/21/2007]

First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, the Kuwaiti firm building the US embassy in Baghdad, is accused of agreeing to pay $200,000 in kickbacks in return for two unrelated Army contracts in Iraq. According to now-sealed court documents, First Kuwaiti worked with a manager for KBR, the US contracting firm that handles logistics for the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The document is based on grand jury testimony from the former KBR manager, Anthony J. Martin, who pled guilty in July to taking bribes from First Kuwaiti in 2003 (see July 13, 2007). The US government has tried to keep First Kuwaiti’s name out of public records related to Martin’s case. Martin told the grand jury that he took part in a bribery scheme with Lebanese businessman Wadih Al Absi, the controlling official of First Kuwaiti. That firm has done a large amount of work for US government entities, including the Army Corps of Engineers and the US Marine Corps. It is under investigation by Congress for its allegedly illegal labor practices, and the Justice Department is investigating the firm for alleged contract fraud on the embassy project. J. Scott Arthur, one of Martin’s defense lawyers, says the US government is improperly withholding evidence about Martin and his relationship with Al Absi and First Kuwaiti. Martin has said that he took kickbacks in return for his awarding a $4.6 million contract to First Kuwaiti to supply 50 semi-tractors and 50 refrigeration trailers for six months. A month later, Martin awarded First Kuwaiti an additional $8.8 million subcontract to supply 150 more semi-tractors for six months. In return, First Kuwaiti agreed to pay him $200,000. Martin says he took $10,000, then refused to take any more money. Martin will testify in the trial of former KBR procurement manager Jeff Mazon (see June 2003). First Kuwaiti denies any wrongdoing, and KBR says through a spokesperson that it “in no way condones or tolerates unethical behavior,” adding, “We have fully cooperated with the Department of Justice.” [Associated Press, 9/21/2007]

Over $1 billion in weapons and material given by the US military to Iraqi security forces cannot be found or accounted for, according to a new report issued by the Defense Department’s Inspector General. Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades make up just some of the “lost” weapons and munitions. CBS News characterizes the report as detailing “a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces.” The report gives numerous specifics, including the fact that of 13,508 weapons—pistols, assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and more—12,712, or almost 90%, cannot be found or accounted for. One Defense Department official, Claude Bolton, the assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics, and technology, has already submitted his resignation, and Congress is expected to investigate. [CBS News, 12/6/2007] The US intelligence community has previously concluded that thousands of weapons given by the US to Iraqi security forces wound up in the hands of insurgents. One instance cited by an intelligence source describes a US military contractor somehow losing track of an entire shipment of Glock pistols. The Defense Department is conducting a massive bribery investigation centered around a military base in Kuwait, involving dozens of high-level US officers and private military contractors. House Armed Service Committee members lambasted what they called the “culture of corruption” surrounding billions in Iraq war contracts. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the committee’s ranking minority member and a presidential candidate, says, “The number of folks who have enormous responsibility to this country are involved has, I think, made this a real tragedy for our country.” [CBS News, 9/20/2007]

Chief Warrant Officer Pete Peleti, formerly the military’s top food adviser in the Middle East, is sentenced to 28 months in prison for taking bribes from US contractors operating fraudulent war-profiteering schemes in Iraq and Kuwait. Peleti took bribes from Saudi conglomerate Tamimi Global Co, US firm Public Warehousing Co, and others between 2003 and 2006. Among the bribes Peleti accepted was a trip to the 2006 Super Bowl. Peleti also accepted bribes from Tamimi executive Shabbir Khan to influence military contracts. In 2006, Peleti was arrested as he re-entered the US at Dover Air Force Base; he was carrying a duffel bag stuffed with watches and jewelry, and had $40,000 hidden inside his clothes. Peleti is now cooperating with prosecutors. This and other information about KBR war profiteering in Iraq comes from a federal investigation that will begin in late 2007 (see October 2006 and Beyond). [Chicago Tribune, 2/20/2008; Chicago Tribune, 2/21/2008]

Nofa Khadduri, an Iraqi peace activist now studying at the University of Toronto, writes an op-ed for the Arabic news network al-Jazeera that terms the Iraq war, and the subsequent occupation, “corporate genocide.” Khadduri writes: “I cannot say this is a war like any other, or even that it is a just war. This war has been too long, too painful, too costly, too evil, too inhumane, and too unjust to simply be deemed an invasion, or even worse, a liberation.… I want this war to be recognized for what it truly is—a genocide against the Iraqi people. It is a corporate hate crime. It is not a ‘just’ war. It does not have a ‘just’ cause. It lacks legitimate authority, it was executed with all the wrong intentions, it was certainly not a last resort, the probability of success was slim.… If the international community recognizes the conflicts in Bosnia, Armenia, and Rwanda as genocides where human rights are replaced with the extermination of ethnic groups, then Iraq deserves the same recognition—and more.” 'Corporate Genocide' in Iraq - Khadduri explains the term “corporate genocide” as something new and horrifyingly different. “Corporate genocide is the mass cooperation of a business-led military invasion, where a population is sacrificed for the economic profit of the invader. A corporate genocide goes beyond blind hate and killing innocent civilians to gain power and territory. In pursuing its economic strategies, the US has caused the death and injury, deliberate or not, of millions of Iraqis.… Foreign businesses that profit and thrive on war have gained new power in Iraq, but lack accountability. Private security firms have little motivation to promote peace—though it is their job—and to end this genocide. Terrorizing my people puts bread in their mouths and takes it away from the mouths of starving Iraqi children. Our war is their income. To keep the money flowing, private security firms dehumanize Iraqi resistance and rebel groups by labeling them as terrorists. The international propagation of this portrayal is one element in the structuring of a corporate genocide. Another is the inability of neither international law nor the international community to hold these firms accountable for their actions, including their killings of innocent people. Individuals perceived to be a threat to the firm are treated as such and can be disposed of under the false guise of an attack, leaving the firms unaccountable. And because these firms have power, they can easily deny misusing it and be believed, if they admit to using it at all.” Pretense of Democracy, Humanitarian Aid - Khadduri writes that the US has achieved little towards implementing democracy in Iraq. It has assuaged little of the suffering caused by the invasion and occupation, and the subsequent civil war raging in parts of the country. This, he writes, is not a failure of US policy, but an effect of the policy. “Iraqi natural resources are being distributed and scattered among the most powerful corporations, with very little profit earmarked towards the rebuilding of Iraq,” he writes. “This is what the corporate genocide is about. There is much debate about whether Iraq can stand on its own after the departure of the US Army. But it is crucial to keep in mind that the US never held Iraq up as a country and it never helped Iraqis come together as a nation.” Leaving Iraq to Shape Its Own Future - The US will never impose its own form of government on Iraq, Khadduri asserts, stating: “I said it five years ago and repeat it now: a Western-style democracy cannot be forced on a nation that does not welcome it. To not believe that we, the Iraqi people, will establish a form of government that we see fit for our needs, by ourselves, is an insult to the Iraqi solidarity and historical heritage that has always, continues to, and will never cease to exist.” [Al-Jazeera, 3/18/2008]

During a PBS broadcast of a panel discussion about US interventions in the Middle East, host Bill Moyers observes that the hidden costs of the Iraq war are staggering. He notes that the huge number of suicides among US soldiers in Iraq as well as those who have come home is “the dirty little secret of this war.” The broken Veterans Administration, and its inability to provide decent medical care for the troops, is another, he says. Not only are these underreported in the US media, he says, even the economic costs get relatively little play, despite the fact that “The war’s costing us $5,000 a second, $12 1/2 billion to $13 billion a month,” with the costs ultimately soaring into the trillions of dollars. “[T]hat would seem to hit people in the viscera,” he says. Guest Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher says that the economic issues of the war are one of the biggest reasons why President Bush’s approval ratings stay below 30 percent, even as the media touts the “surge” (see January 2007 and January 10, 2007) as such a success. “[T]he reason is the people figured out long ago, long ago that the war was a mistake and that it’s incredibly costly in the human and financial and even moral terms.” [PBS, 6/6/2008]

The Iraqi government informs the US Embassy in Baghdad that it will not issue a new operating license to Blackwater Worldwide, the embassy’s main security company. In effect, the decision forces Blackwater to cease operations within Iraq. Many Blackwater employees are accused of using excessive force while protecting US diplomats and State Department personnel. Those Blackwater employees not accused of improper conduct may continue working as private security contractors in Iraq, as long as they quit Blackwater and begin working for other firms. Blackwater must leave Iraq as soon as a joint US-Iraqi committee finalizes guidelines for the conduct and liability of private contractors under the new security agreement between the two countries. Under earlier agreements, Blackwater and other US contractors have been entirely immune from prosecution under Iraqi law. Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf says, “When the work of this committee ends,” private security companies “will be under the authority of the Iraqi government, and those companies that don’t have licenses, such as Blackwater, should leave Iraq immediately.” US State Department spokesman Noel Clay says the department’s contractors will obey Iraqi law: “We will work with the government of Iraq and our contractors to address the implications of this decision in a way that minimizes any impact on safety and security of embassy Baghdad personnel.” A Blackwater spokeswoman says her firm is unaware of the Iraqi government’s decision. The Interior Ministry revoked Blackwater’s license to operate in Iraq in September 2007 and threatened to expel the firm’s employees, but US officials ignored the order and renewed the company’s contract. Blackwater contractors have been involved in around 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, many involving Iraqi civilians. Five Blackwater contractors face manslaughter charges for killing 17 Iraqi civilians in September 2007, the incident that prompted the Interior Ministry to try to expel the firm from the country. The widow of one of the 17 civilians, Umm Tahsin, says of Blackwater: “Those people are a group of criminals. What they did was a massacre. Pushing them out is the best solution. They destroyed our family.” [Washington Post, 1/28/2009]

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